provinces; commander a tant de peuples; se faire respecter, craindre et admirer, et voir d'un chacan; et dormir vefve, seule, et froide comme glace?”

What boots it to possess a royal state,

To view fair subject-towns from princely tow'rs,
With mask and song to sport in frolic bow'rs,

Or watch with prudence o'er a nation's fate,
If the heart throb not to a tender mate;

If doom'd, when feasts are o'er, and midnight lours,
Still to lie lonely in a widow'd bed,

And waste in chill regret the secret hours?
Happier the lowly maid, by fondness led
To meet the transports of some humble swain,
Than she, the object of her people's care,
Rever'd by all, who finds no heart to share,
And pines, too great for love, in splendid pain.

Mary sought relief from the tiresome uniformity of the voyage, in attending to the productions of the young Frenchman; she even deigned to reply to them, and amused herself frequently with his conversation. This dangerous familiarity overpowered the heart of poor Chastelard. He conceived a hopeless and unconquerable passion, and found himself, almost

at the same moment, obliged to quit the presence of its object, and to return to his native country.

Soon afterwards, the civil wars began in France; and Chastelard, who was a protestant, eagerly sought, a pretence for re-visiting Scotland, in his aversion to take arms against the royal party. Mary received him with goodness, but she soon repented her condescension. His passion no longer knew any bounds, and he was found one evening, by her women, concealed under her bed, just before she retired to rest... She consulted equally her dignity and her natural mildness, by pardoning this sally of youthful frenzy, and commanding the affair to be suppressed. But Chastelard was incorrigible: he repeated his offence, and the queen delivered him up to her courts of justice, by which he was sentenced to be beheaded.

His conduct, at the time of his death, was romantic in the extreme. He would

accept no spiritual assistance, but read, with great devotion, Ronsard's Hymn on Death. He then turned towards the Queen's apartments, and exclaimed, Farewell the fairest, and most cruel princess in the world; after which he submitted to the stroke of justice, with the courage of a Rinaldo or an Olindo.

The ancient heroines of romance were content with banishing a presumptuous lover from their presence. Perhaps the extravagance of Chastelard's feeling was such, that he might have considered exile from Scotland as the severest of punishments. Mary certainly exercised her dispensing power with more lenity, on some other occasions.

The establishment of a buffoon, or king's jester, which operated so forcibly on Sterne's imagination, as to make him adopt the name of Yorick, furnished an additional motive for the exertions of ludicrous writers, in that age. To jest was the ambition of the best company;

and when the progress of civilization is duly weighed, between the period to which I have confined my observations, and the time of Charles II. of this country, it will appear that the value set upon sheer wit, as it was then called, was hardly less inconsistent with strict judgment, than was the merriment of the cap and bells with the grave discussions of the furred doctors, or learned ladies of the old French court.

CHAPTER II.

Ludicrous writers, from whom Sterne probably took general ideas, or particular passages. Rabelais-Beroalde-D'Aubignè ---Bouchet---Bruscambille-Scarron-Swift

-Gabriel John.

SOME of my readers may probably find themselves introduced, in this chapter, to some very strange acquaintances, and may experience a sensation like that which accompanies the first entrance into a gallery of ancient portraits; where the buff and old iron, the black scull-caps, wide ruffs and farthingales, however richly bedecked, conceal, for a while, the expression and the charms of the bestfeatures. With a little patience, it will